Callous Cares
by LittleKnux2008
Summary: McWeir, post Letters From Pegasus. Elizabeth is comtemplating her message to Simon when she finds a gift from Rodney.


**Title: **Callous Cares

**Rating: **PG

**Genre: **General

**Warnings: **Unbetaed and written in like twenty minutes.

**Spoilers: **"Letters From Pegasus"

**Pairing(s): **McWeir, friendship or otherwise depends on your opinion

**Distribution: **WeirMcKayShip

**Disclaimer: **I own the story itself; the characters and belong to MGM.

**Author's Note: **Another short McWeir-ish story from me. I can't stop now:) Not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing yet. But anyway… I hope you like. This is a sort-of missing scene from "Letters From Pegasus."

* * *

Elizabeth Weir brushed at the corner of her eye with her hand as she walked to her office, wiping away the evidence of the beginnings of a tear. She sighed softly and lifted her head. It had taken a lot out of her; that message—_both_ of the messages, really. To read off every person who had died in the name of the Atlantis colony…it struck her how many loses they had had, how many sleepless nights she herself had suffered upon hearing the news. After taping individual messages to the parents of each fallen woman and man, Elizabeth had taped a message to Simon.

Just thinking about it made it worse. Elizabeth sighed. It was awfully bittersweet. Everything she had said was true—it wasn't fair for him to wait for her. He needed to move on with his life. Those facts had weighed heavily on her mind for weeks, the guilt stressing her further. He didn't deserve this.

Elizabeth winced as she inevitably recalled a recurring memory. She had been walking down the halls and had quite clearly overheard two men talking. Which two men, she had been unsure and too distracted after hearing their words to ask.

"_If Elizabeth loves Simon…then why did she leave him?"_

The question had cut into an untapped part of her emotions that she'd been trying to ignore all along. It was so cruel, so unfair of her, to keep Simon hanging like that. He deserved so much better. But that wasn't the worst part, no… She would eventually deal with the guilt and the emptiness inside of her that seemed to preside after she'd let Simon go, but this? This questioning if she had _truly _loved Simon? Elizabeth couldn't take it.

She didn't know the answer. It tantalized her, far within the reach of her subconscious. No normal person would leave their love behind to travel light years away. No _human _that felt _emotion_ would ever leave them behind with the possibility of never seeing them again. And especially not over some stupid career opportunity.

Elizabeth sighed once more to herself, infinitely relieved to have come to her office. With the threat of the Wraith upon them and the emotional roller coaster that claimed her because of her message to Simon, it was a relief to enter her office and immerse her brain in work and free herself from her emotions.

"What's this?" Elizabeth murmured the words aloud as the door shut behind her. Her shoes clicked softly against the floor as she approached her desk and fingered the flower that sat upon a stack of mission reports. _'It's beautiful,' _Elizabeth thought to herself, examining the white flower. The center was a deep blue, nearly the color of Atlantis's waters, but the rest was a striking contrast of pure white. Elizabeth ran her finger over the veins of blue in the milky petals. So intent on the intricate pattern, her eyes took a while longer to spot the small scrap of paper attached to it at the end. Elizabeth's eyebrows creased in curiosity as she turned it, reading the short message. _Best wishes_. A ghostly smile graced her face. She immediately recognized Rodney McKay's sideways scrawl.

Rodney McKay. Elizabeth looked at the flower's petals once more, pondering. Rodney himself was as intricate as the flower; a puzzle waiting to be figured out. Elizabeth was nearly positive that if she asked most of the people on Atlantis, they would say Rodney was blunt and sarcastic; like the stark white of the flower. It seemed odd to Elizabeth, who knew about the deeper side to him, that they would think that he was so callous. She considered the irony with a twinge of a smile to her lips. They said Rodney never would give a second thought to anyone else, yet here she was, holding a flower that he must've taken a trip to the mainland to get, just for her, just to cheer her up—and it had succeeded.

"How callous of you, Rodney," Elizabeth whispered, "to care." She frowned, rolling the flower over in her palms, thinking of those who would call him coldhearted and unfeeling. Weren't they really the ones who were the coldhearted? Elizabeth pushed the thought asides. Beneath all of the shallow complaints about how slow and annoying the scientists were, Elizabeth knew that Rodney cared for each one of them. _'If they only knew…' _Elizabeth thought, _'Oh, if they only knew how much he does care.'_

But only she had that privilege.


End file.
